PNEUMA 36 (2014) 25–44
Pentecostal History, Imagination,
and Listening between the Lines
Historiographic Creativity for Writing Histories of the Marginalized
Andrew Sinclair Hudson*
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Abstract
As Pentecostals have historically lived, ministered, and led from the margins, their histories often challenge the historian. Reading the religious and social histories con- temporaneous to the beginnings of many pentecostal churches and movements is often not enough to discover the complex tapestry of pentecostal voices. Not only oral but also, and particularly, aural historical elements play a key role in the recov- ery of the “unheard” protagonists in pentecostal histories. The example of Richard Green Spurling and the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) provides an opportunity to imaginatively reconstruct the influences of African Americans on a white Appalachian Baptist-turned-pentecostal preacher. Investigating sung moments of African American prisoners working on a local railroad could shape the religious pedigree of this classical North American pentecostal denomination. This article will explore pentecostal histo- riography by investigating Spurling and the sung music of African American prisoners as a case study of imaginatively rereading pentecostal histories.
Keywords
pentecostal historiography – African American religion – Appalachian religion – Church of God (Cleveland, TN) – ethnomusicology
* I would like to thank David Roebuck, Marie Spurling Crook, and Wade Phillips for their help
in my research as well as the anonymous readers whose comments, corrections and critiques
brought this article to fruition.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/15700747-03601003
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…
I do not believe that the pattern of Southern life can be fundamentally reshaped until what lies behind these roaring, ironic choruses is under- stood.
alan lomax
Sound becomes a medium for expressing theology in song, speech, primal cries, ambient sounds, and music-making. Through the choreography of sound, meaning is internalized. Sound becomes a hermeneutic and its generation of knowledge supplements epistemology with acoustemology as a sonic way of knowing.
david daniels iii1
∵
Introduction
The Church of God (Cleveland, TN) has historically been acknowledged to have begun as an Appalachian church.2 Because of its Southern Appalachian location, it has been assumed that the first congregations would fit the social
1 Alan Lomax, “Murderous Home” and “What Makes a Work Song Leader?” in Prison Songs:
Historical Recordings from Parchman Farm 1947–48, Vol. 1, Murderous Home(Cambridge, MA:
Rounder Records Corporation, 1997 [1947]); David Daniels, “‘Gotta Moan Sometime’: A Sonic
Exploration of Earwitnesses to Early Pentecostal Sound in North America,”Pneuma30 (2008):
26.
2 Charles W. Conn,Like a Mighty Army: A History of the Church of God, Definitive Edition(Cleve-
land, TN: Pathway Press, 1995); Deborah McCauley, Appalachian Mountain Religion: A History
(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 277–280; Wade Phillips, “Richard Spurling and Our
Baptist Heritage,”Reflections: Newsletter of the Hal Bernard Dixon Jr. Pentecostal Research Cen-
ter2, no. 4 (Spring 1993): 1–3; “The Church of God in the Light and Shadow of America,” unpub-
lished research paper (Cleveland, TN, 2002); “The Significance of the Fire-Baptized Holiness
Movement (1895–1900) in the Historical and Theological Development of the Wesleyan-
Pentecostal-Charismatic Metamorphosis,” paper presented to the Second Annual Meeting of
the Historical Society of Church of God Movements (Cleveland, TN: May 24, 2003). Hereafter
“Church of God” will be used to refer specifically to the Church of God (Cleveland, TN). For
more on the different groups with the name Church of God see Vinson Synan, The Holiness-
Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids, MI:
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pentecostal history, imagination, and listening
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pattern and type of “isolated whites.”3 Consequently, the written history of the Church of God does not include African Americans until 1909.4 Yet, upon fur- ther critical investigation, Appalachian history reveals a tri-racial culture5 and interesting chronological and geographic overlaps of these “isolated whites” with the sociocultural presence and influence of African Americans. By inten- tionally listening to the sung music of African American prisoners, I am at- tempting to imaginatively reconstruct a plausible musical interaction between African Americans and the so-called “isolated whites” and to suggest a his- torical African American influence on Richard Green (R.G.) Spurling and the formation of the Church of God.
My task in this article is both historical and historiographic. Historically, I am seeking to reconstruct the diverse cultural and religious landscape of Southern Appalachia by highlighting the often overlooked influence of African Ameri- cans in the region. Historiographically, I am arguing for an expansion of the historical material and scope of historical investigation in religious, particularly pentecostal, histories. Methodologically, I will construct this argument through the employment of oral, aural, and written histories. The reconstructive nature of this article employs imaginative exploration that requires interdisciplinary work. I will investigate the ethnomusicology of African American convict lease labor, personal interviews with descendants of early Church of God leaders, and Appalachian ethnohistories in light of written Church of God history.
Wm.B.Eerdmans,1997),68–83;andAllanAnderson,AnIntroductiontoPentecostalism:Global
Charismatic Christianity(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 51–57.
3 See Conn, Like a Mighty Army, 5. For a critical deconstruction of these isolationist perspec-
tives see Henry D. Shapiro Appalachia on Our Mind (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina, 1978), 77, 80.
4 H. Paul Thompson, Jr., “On Account of Conditions That Seem Unalterable: A Proposal about
Race Relations in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) 1909–1929,”Pneuma25, no. 2 (2003): 247;
see also: David G. Roebuck, “Unraveling the Cords that Divide,” paper presented at the 40th
Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Theology (Memphis, TN: March 2011), 3–5; Conn,
Like a Mighty Army, 112–117; Bill George, Until All Have Heard (Cleveland, TN: Pathway Press,
2010), 19–20.
5 The tri-racial culture of Appalachia reveals European, Cherokee, and African peoples, tradi-
tions, and culture. Laurence French, An Oral History of Southern Appalachia (Lewiston, NY:
Edwin Mellen Press, 2008); Jon F. Sensbach, “Before the Bible Belt,” in Religion in the Ameri-
canSouth, ed. Beth B. Schweiger and Donald G. Mathews (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press, 2004), 5–30.
PNEUMA 36 (2014) 25–44
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A Pentecostal History
The Church of God is historically remembered as an Appalachian pentecostal church in her infancy.6 It was not until 1905, under the leadership of Ambrose J. Tomlinson, that the church would lose her Appalachian-mountain centering when the group of churches transferred their center to the valley town of Cleve- land, Tennessee. This article will focus on the church’s earlier Appalachian history, which ranges between 1886 and 1905 and is extant in a collage of writ- ten histories and oral traditions. The vagueness of this “Appalachian” history has precipitated an uncritical assumption that the first congregations were influenced and embodied only by “isolated whites.” Charles Conn indirectly evinced these isolationist perspectives in his historical account of the Church of God’s Appalachian infancy: “Characteristics of the people included isolation- ism, conservatism, individualism, frugality and a hearty degree of fatalism.”7 These isolationist typologies have been deconstructed in Appalachian studies. Henry Shapiro described this vision of Appalachia as a fabricated conservation of ethnic purity in which the “purest Anglo-Saxon stock” could be found in the isolation of the mountains.8 The continuation of these typologies in the Church of God’s history has silenced the influence of African Americans in this early history.
This fabricated social imaginary of Appalachia still delimits the participa- tion and investigation of protagonists in the Church of God’s early history despite the tri-racial culture of Appalachia, in which peoples of Cherokee, African American, and Euro-American descent have historically populated the region.9 Consequently, written histories of the Church of God, her mem- bers, and church formation are still silent about African American influence in the beginning of the 1880s.10 Not until 1909 are African American voices,
6 McCauley, Appalachian Mountain Religion, 277–280; Wade Phillips, “Richard Spurling
and Our Baptist Heritage,”Reflections: Newsletter of the Hal Bernard Dixon Jr. Pentecostal
Research Center 2, no. 4 (Spring 1993): 1–3; “The Church of God in the Light and Shadow
of America,” and “The Significance of the Fire-Baptized Holiness Movement (1895–1900)
in the Historical and Theological Development of the Wesleyan-Pentecostal-Charismatic
Metamorphosis.”
7 Conn, Like a Mighty Army, 5.
8 Shapiro, Appalachia on Our Mind, 77, 80.
9 The scope of this paper does not permit discussion of the full ethnographic diversity of
the tri-racial culture of Southern Appalachia. See French, An Oral History of Southern
Appalachia, and Sensbach, “Before the Bible Belt,” 5–30.
10 Conn provides a glancing reference to the “friendly Cherokee” who were “unhappily”
PNEUMA 36 (2014) 25–44
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pentecostal history, imagination, and listening
29
leadership, and influences recorded.11 The late recording, though not excep- tional in its character, perpetuates the stereotype of isolated whites starting an Appalachian church and is misleading about the cultural diversity in Southern Appalachia.
The African American presence within the region of the Church of God’s origins in the 1880s emerges from the reinvestigation of the tri-racial context of Southern Appalachia. Ethnographic research on Southern Appalachia points to the active presence of African Americans in and around the birthplace of the Church of God.12 The continued presence of African Americans in the region of Southern Appalachia provides the most basic challenge to the cultural mythol- ogy of their absence. Although the mountainous region has been historically characterized by isolation and merely subsistence agriculture rather than plan- tation cash-crop production, Southern Appalachia’s African American popula- tion traces its roots to the industry of chattel slavery. Tragically, even within many academic publications, the fabled absence of African American slavery in Appalachia still persists, despite empirical studies of census records that clearly reveal that “slavery existed in all of the Appalachian South … in every Appalachian county south of the Mason-Dixon line.”13 At stake in this histori- cal mis-acknowledgement is not merely a more diverse demographic, but also a continuity of voice and recognition of cultural influence. African Americans were and are a bodily presence and voice in Southern Appalachian culture.14 The evidence of African Americans in Southern Appalachian culture, as exem- plified by Cherokee-owned plantations15 and music styles and instruments that
removed but never raises the possibility of African Americans within the culture. Conn,
Like a Mighty Army, 5–6.
11 Roebuck, “Unraveling the Cords that Divide,” 3–5; Conn, Like a Mighty Army, 112–117;
George,Until All Have Heard, 19–20.
12 John C. Inscoe, Race, War, and Remembrance in the Appalachian South (Lexington, KY:
University of Kentucky Press, 2008), 105. William H. Turner, “The Demography of Black
Appalachia: Past and Present,” inBlacks in Appalachia, ed. William H. Turner and Edward
J. Cabbell (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1985), 239; Frederick L. Olmsted,
A Journey in the Backcountry(New York: C.A. Alvord, Mason Brothers, 1860), 217. 13 Richard B. Drake, “Slavery and Antislavery in Appalachia,” in Appalachians and Race,
ed. John C. Inscoe (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2001), 17; Turner, “The
Demography of Black Appalachia: Past and Present,” 237–261.
14 Wilma A. Dunaway, Slavery in the American Mountain South (New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2003), 5; and Conrad Ostwalt and Phoebe Pollitt, “The Salem School and
Orphanage: White Missionaries, Black School,” in Appalachians and Race, ed. John C.
Inscoe (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2001), 235.
15 Daniel C. Crews, Faith and Tears (Winston-Salem, NC: Moravian Archives, 2000), 3; and
Claudio Saunt, Black, White, and Indian(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 64–65.
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still define the region’s bluegrass music,16 prompts another look at the possible African American influences on the early Church of God.
It was in this tri-racial context of Southern Appalachia that the first three developmental events of the nascent church took place.17 These events overlap like phases and are not recorded with great specificity, but are extant in the form of several narratives. The first event was the founding of the Christian Union (the first congregation) on August 19, 1886 in Cherokee County, North Carolina, followed by possibly three more local congregations with the same name.18 Second, in 1896 an Appalachian Holiness revival began in the Shearer Schoolhouse in Cherokee County, North Carolina with influences of Irwin Fire-Baptized theology.19 Finally, the third event was the formation of the Holiness Church in Camp Creek, North Carolina in 1902.20
16 See Cecelia Conway, African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia (Knoxville, TN: University of
Tennessee Press, 1995); and Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1995).
17 Mickey Crews, The Church of God (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1990),
10; Conn, Like a Mighty Army; A.J. Tomlinson, Last Great Conflict (Cleveland, TN: Press
of Walter E. Rodgers, 1913); E.L. Simmons, History of the Church of God (Cleveland, TN:
Church of God Publishing House, 1938); “History of the Church of God, Second Edition,”
unpublished typescript, 1949, accessed and used by permission of Dixon Pentecostal
Research Center Archives: Cleveland, TN; M.S. Lemons, “History of the Church of God,”
unpublished history, ca. 1937, accessed and used by permission of Dixon Pentecostal
Research Center Archives: Cleveland, TN.
18 For the 1886 first congregation see Conn, Like a Mighty Army, 12; Tomlinson, Last Great
Conflict, 185. The exact location of the Second Christian Union congregation is still ambig-
uous, but a dated photograph is in the private collection of Wade Philips. Most likely the
congregation was in Cherokee County, NC or Monroe County, TN, as Spurling’s itinerant
church planting and preaching ministry was within this walking distance. “Marie Spurling
Crook Interview” (Cleveland, TN: October 27, 2010), interview conducted by author. See
also: G.P. Spurling, “Biographical Sketch of the Reverend R.G. Spurling,” unpublished type-
script, accessed and used by permission of Dixon Pentecostal Research Center Archives:
Cleveland, TN.
19 W.F. Bryant’s 1922 account of the Shearer Schoolhouse Revival implied that the revivals
were probably a series of scattered services that lasted for about three years. The signifi-
cance of the 1896 dating seems to revolve around the expulsion of these revivals from the
Schoolhouse and their continunation in informal settings thereafter. “History of Pente-
cost,”The Faithful Standard (September 1922): 6.
20 Revival attendants that continued to practice this frontier Holiness Christianity were
expelled from local congregations and later organized into the Holiness Church at Camp
Creek on May 15, 1902 under the leadership of Richard G. Spurling and William F. Bryant,
Jr. Conn, Like a Mighty Army, 23–30, 53; Tomlinson, Last Great Conflict, 210.
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pentecostal history, imagination, and listening
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Common to all of these overlapping events is Richard Green (R.G.) Spurl- ing in the role of protagonist. The life and work of R.G. Spurling, a white Appalachian Baptist soon-to-be pentecostal preacher, serve as a key for the enigmatic historiography of this period.21 The myriad grassroots congregations and Holiness groups surrounding the foundation of the Christian Unions, the Shearer Schoolhouse Revival, and the formation of the Holiness Church at Camp Creek makes it difficult to distinguish between continuity and merely parallel movements in formation or conflict.22 This is further complicated by the differences of ecclesiological identity that emerge with the person of Ambrose J. Tomlinson and his leadership; it was Tomlinson who provided the written history of the 1886 Christian Union. Much has recently been written with a view to tracing the thread of this history, and I will not repeat that work here. Instead, I will simply affirm the identification of Spurling as the central leader and the continuity of the early period of the Church of God (1886– 1910).23
Spurling was the first pastor24 within this group of Baptists and Holiness revivalists and a key leader in these three event-phases.25 Widening the lens of investigation in search of African American influences and recognizing Spurl- ing’s importance, I would like to pay close attention to an otherwise peripheral event in Spurling’s life that was contemporaneous to the dawning period of the Church of God. The Spurling family’s oral tradition preserves that R.G. worked on the construction of a local railroad project while simultaneously found- ing and leading the early Church of God. According to family tradition, R.G. helped provide lumber for the large railroad project of the Hiwassee Loop con-
21 “R.G. Spurling best represents the first phase of this formative period (1886–1910).” Dale
Coulter, “The Development of Ecclesiology in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN),”Pneuma
29, no. 1 (2007): 61; and “Founding Vision or Visions?”Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charis-
matic Research 21, http://pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj21/Coulter.html, accessed April 16,
2013.
22 Daniel G. Woods, “Daniel Awrey, the Fire-Baptized Movement, and the Origins of the
Church of God,” Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research 19, http://pctii
.org/cyberj/cyberj19/woods.html, accessed May 30, 2013.
23 See Coulter’s justification of Spurling’s role and leadership countered by Hunter’s argu-
ment for Tomlinson’s later leadership. Coulter, “The Development of Ecclesiology in the
Church of God (Cleveland, TN)” and “Founding Vision or Visions.” Harold Hunter, “A.J.
Tomlinson’s Emerging Ecclesiology,”Pneuma32, no. 3 (2010): 369–389.
24 James Beaty, R.G. Spurling and the Early History of the Church of God (Cleveland, TN:
Derek Press, 2012), and Wade H. Phillips “The Church of God in the Light and Shadow
of America.”
25 Phillips, “Richard Spurling and Our Baptist Heritage,” 1–3.
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struction.26 The duration or extent of Spurling’s work on this project is not exactly clear, but, as later sermons and discourse reveal, Spurling’s involvement with the railroad had a lasting impact on his preaching and personal religious beliefs.
The Hiwassee Loop27 is an intricate section of railroad that was constructed between 1886 and 1903 in order to bring the railroad through the untamed topography of Tate Mountain and the Hiwassee River basin. A patchwork his- tory of railroad bankruptcies caused by costly innovation required both the use of locals like Spurling to provide lumber and the inhumane system of convict lease labor28 to grade the unyielding slopes of Tate Mountain. Between 200 and 250 prisoners at this construction site were remembered by railroad employees for their continuous singing that echoed throughout the years of the construc- tion.29 A closer look at the prisoner lease records reveals an immoral system in which African Americans were forced into inhumane captivity. These men were imprisoned to raise money for state governments and to provide labor at costs economically lower than slavery for new industries in the Southeast.30 This is confirmed by statistical records that reveal that approximately 180 of the prisoners working alongside Spurling at the Hiwassee Loop were African
26 “Marie Spurling Crook Interview,” October 27, 2010. The charter for the contemporaneous
and nearby Cartersville, Maryville, and Knoxville Railroad Company reveals that the
Hiwassee Loop construction was paying $0.25 per railroad tie, at a rate of 2,500 ties per
mile. Estimating a possible payment of $4,224.00 to lumber contractors, this large sum
would have likely been attractive to R.G. Spurling and other locals familiar with the
region’s timber. “C.M.K. Railroad Charter,” 1890, in the Robert E. Barclay Papers (Location
Item 15 Microfilm Reel #12), accessed and used by permission of Tennessee State Library
and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee.
27 For a detailed history of the construction of the Hiwassee Loop see The Old Line Rail-
road, compiled and ed. Ingrid Buelher and Linda Caldwell (Benton, TN: Polk County
Publishing, 2009); Maury Klein, History of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad (New York:
Macmillan Company, 1972); Kincaid A. Herr,TheLouisvilleandNashvilleRailroad1850–1942
(Louisville, KY: L.&N. Magazine, 1943); and Joseph G. Kerr,Louisville and Nashville Railroad
Company(Louisville, KY: Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company, 1926), accessed and
used by permission of: University Archives and Records Center, University of Louisville:
Louisville, KY.
28 Mary E. Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865–1900 (Charlottesville, VA:
University of Virginia Press, 2000), 13; and Milfred C. Fierce, Slavery Revisited (New York:
Africana Studies Research Center, 1994), 9, 77.
29 H.G. Monroe, “Hook and Eye Division,” in Railroad Magazine(June 1940), 9, accessed and
used by permission of: University Archives and Records Center, University of Louisville:
Louisville, KY.
30 Fierce,Slavery Revisited, 77.
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Americans.31 The names of these prisoners have not yet been recovered, but their music continues through later audio recordings of a sacred sung tradition they preserved and propagated.
Imagination, Making Room to Listen
Shifting focus from the traditional written history to the peripheral events of Spurling’s life brings us to the fallow historical setting of this railroad construc- tion site, the setting in which the historian is privileged to have the opportunity to hear the unheard. When we acknowledge the way in which historical dis- crimination has continued through the notion of “white isolation” that prevails in the historiography of the Church of God, we are compelled to embark upon an innovative search for the voices and influences of the African Americans of Appalachia that have been silent in the history of this church’s formation. Yet, in a historical setting in which human beings were held in captivity for simply being both African and American,32 traditional historical methods of looking for names and narratives will not suffice. In order to recover African American influences on the early Church of God, the historian employ a dignifying imag- ination that takes into account protagonists that had hierto been denied histo- riographic privilege.33 This imagination is not a counter-mythology designed to conjure up cultural diversity in response to the mythology of “white isola- tion,” but rather is intended to be an intentional historiographic engagement of the historical setting that was inaccurately identified as culturally homoge- nous. This imagination hears the forgotten protagonists as the historian listens between the lines of traditional historiography to the peripheral music at the construction site where Spurling was working during his early leadership of the Church of God.
Researching musical activity is not a new task for pentecostal historians, and it is not surprising that music would substantiate the rich diversity of influences on the formation of this pentecostal church.34 Music has been described as a
31 Ibid., 10; and Alex Lichtenstein,TwicetheWorkofFreeLabor(New York: Verso, 1996), 46–47,
64.
32 See Douglas Blackmon,Slavery By Another Name(New York: Anchor Books, 2008). 33 For a similar historiographic method see Trouillot’s assertion to “debunk the myth of
The Past as a fixed reality,” Michel-RolphTrouillot,Silencing the Past (Boston, MA: Beacon
Press, 1995), 147.
34 E.g., David Martin, Tongues of Fire (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 175–176; and
Bernardo Campos, Experiencia del Espiritu(Quito, Ecuador: CLAI, 2002), 79.
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regulative and guiding activity of both worship and social order within Pen- tecostalism.35 But I would like to make a stronger appeal about pentecostal music. Pentecostalism is a religion in which divine encounter and immedi- acy reside as theological centers.36 Listening between the lines of the history reveals that music is relaying aural testaments of felt emotive articulation; and this music could function as an unheard pentecostal “testimony” that facilitates the historical recovery of marginalized people.37 Recognizing the potential of these musical testimonies precipitates an investigation of the possible musical interaction between R.G. Spurling and African American prisoners during his work on the railroad construction. By intentionally listening to the prisoners’ sung music, I am imaginatively reconstructing a plausible musical interaction and a historical African American influence on R.G. Spurling and the formation of the Church of God.
A dignifying imagination reclaims these forgotten African Americans from the background and re-envisions them as religious protagonists that provided a tangible religious symbiosis of belief through their sung music.38 The record- ings of ethnomusicologists provide aural testimony of how the prisoners’ seem- ingly mundane work preserved and multiplied a deeply sacred tradition, a
35 I am basing my thought on the epistemological ideas of James K.A. Smith. For example, “…
I mean that embedded in the embodied practices and spirituality of Pentecostalism are
the elements of a latent but distinctive understanding of the world…” James K.A. Smith,
Thinking in Tongues (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2010), 31. Whereas Grant
Wacker recognizes a regulating instrument in music for pentecostal liturgy, I would like to
move forward by also recognizing the aural and sonic experience of music as a particular
historic articulation of pentecostal belief. Wacker,HeavenBelow(Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2001), 109–110.
36 Terry L. Cross, “The Divine-Human Encounter: Toward a Theology of Experience,”Pneuma
31, no. 1 (2009): 3–34.
37 In a sense, this is a historiographic demonstration of David Daniels’ call for historic
investigation of sonic elements in early North American Pentecostalism. “Resonating
with the multidimensionality of early Pentecostalism, sonic discourse complements other
forms of discourse drawn from psychology, sociology, anthropology, and economics. The
sonic discourse supplies an explanation of cultural borrowings that eludes dependence
on functionalist theories of social deprivation, psychological disorder, secularization, or
globalization…” Daniels, “Gotta Moan Sometime,” 11.
38 I am employing James Cone’s interpretation of African American labor music as theology.
Cone insists that this music is much more than a reactionary articulation to what is being
done to oppressed black peoples; rather, it is a creative theological response “to restrict
the white assault on their humanity.” James H. Cone, “Black Spirituals,” in Risks of Faith
(Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1999), 15–16.
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tradition that I believe has vast significance for Pentecostal religious beliefs. Listening to the melodies and continual rhythms of these African American prisoners’ work ballads compel us to recognize another layer of epistemolog- ical reflection and articulation.39 The wails and bent notes of the lead singer reveal the released anguish that was not allowed within the verbal lyrics over- heard by guards. Those who appear within written histories as mere details of railroad economics become cultural and religious protagonists when they are heard in the songs of their toil.
Listening Between the Lines
Due to the technological limitations of Spurling’s period, the historian must depend on the later audio recordings of ethnomusicology to retrieve the emo- tion in these African American worksongs. In a 1934 article, pioneer ethno- musicologist John Lomax recorded the words of a powerful worksong entitled “Godamighty!”
Ridin’ in a hurry. Great Godamighty! Ridin’ like he’s angry. Great Godamighty! Well, I wonder whuts de matter? Great Godamighty! Bull Whup in one han’, Great Godamighty! Cowhide in de udder, Great Godamighty! Gonna be trouble! Great Godamighty! Well, de Cap’n went to talkin’ Great Godamighty! “Well, come here an’ hol’ him.” Great Godamighty! “Bully, low down yo’ britches!” Great Godamighty! “Cap’n let me off, suh!” Great Godamighty! “Woncha ‘low me a chance, suh?” Great Godamighty! De bully went to pleadin’, Great Godamighty! De bully went to hollerin’, Great Godamighty!40
39 Daniel Chiquete supports the expansion of comprehension as a pentecostal exploration:
“Considero que hay otras formas de saberes, más allá o paralelos al saber y el conocimiento
científicos, otras formas de conocer, de aprender, que sin ser científicos, pueden ser
igualmente válidos e importantes.” Haciendo Camino al Andar (San José, Costa Rica:
Centro Cristiano Casa de Vida, 2007), 27.
40 John Lomax, “‘Sinful Songs’ of the Southern Negro,”The Musical Quarterly20, no. 2 (April
1934): 180.
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When imaginatively listened to between the lines, what appears at first to be a work ballad without religious intent reveals an intrinsically theological voice of protest. The pain of an expected flogging for work unfinished and trouble between inmates request divine mercy: “Godamighty!” Yet the respon- sive refrain also invoked the judgment power of “Great Godamighty” for the felt pain of the punished prisoner. The known power of “Great Godamighty” invoked fear and revitalized lost energy so that the prisoners might complete their assigned labor. In the pain foreshadowed in the boss’s “ridin’ in a hurry” and the all too familiar pain of the “De bully went to hollerin,’” the hearer is returned to the echoing and figuratively expansive “Great Godamighty!” The presence of the Divine is found not only in the response of “Great Godamighty,” but in the felt reality of the song’s narrative calls, in which a responsive God confronts the lived reality of the prisoner.41
Bama, an African American prisoner interviewed in Alabama in the 1940s, provided access to a voice that is often hidden between the words of these prison worksongs. Responding to the question of what is required for someone to be a good leader of the traditional call and response prison worksongs, Bama said the following:
… it take the man with the most experience to my understandin’ to make the best leader in anything. You see, if you’d bring a brand new man here, if he had voice where he could sing just like Peter could preach, and he didn’t know what to sing about, well he wouldn’t do no good, see. But here’s a fellow, he, maybe he ain’t got no voice for singin’ but he’s been cooperating with the peoples so long an’ been on the job so long till he know just exactly how it should go. And if he can just mostly talk it—why, and you understand how to work,—well, it would go good with you. It don’t make any difference about the voice … you have to be done experienced.42
41 The performance of the song is what triggers the historian of Pentecostalism to look for an
element of religious belief. According to Ogbu Kalu, “Pentecostal critique is not just about
historical origin and some ingredients of theology, but about ritual practices because of
the relationship between religious experience and religious expression.” African Pente-
costalism(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 81.
42 Transcription of audio recording taken from compact disc booklet. Alan Lomax, “What
Makes a Work Song Leader?” in Prison Songs: Historical Recordings from Parchman Farm
1947–48, Vol. 1, Murderous Home (Cambridge, MA: Rounder Records Corporation, 1997
[1947]).
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Bama’s response equips the historian with lived interpretation of the emo- tive articulation recorded in the sacred moments of the prisoners’ songs. His response foils the conversational context of a question that prioritized rhythm as a utilitarian pacing of labor. According to Bama, voice quality and rhythm are subservient to the sacred voicing of the “experience.”
To be a good song leader one must “have to be done experienced,” they have lived through “cooperating with the peoples so long” and been plunged into the depths of unending labor without pay or humane recognition, and then they “know just exactly how it should go.”43 To enter into the extemporane- ous composition of these call and response sung moments was to re-enter the experiences and feelings that were not allowed the privilege of spoken or writ- ten protest. In this sense, singing in the line of imprisoned laborers working in synchronization on unending tasks, such as grading for the Hiwassee Loop, was to claim audaciously a connection with the Divine that sustained one beyond what was physically realistic. To join in this sacred activity was to sing into- nations of empowerment in the face of guards who embodied constant sub- jugation.44 Reimagined, the prisoners were composers of a sacred testament of embodied divine power that favored their physically exhausted bodies over the seemingly impossible labor tasks that they were assigned.45 The African American prisoners’ songs challenge the historiographer’s usual parameters of recording history, claiming place for the aural alongside the written.
43 Kosuke Koyama’s concept of the praxis of “free theologizing” provides a helpful dialogue
partner for the interpretation of Bama’s testimony.Waterbuffalo Theology(Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 1974), 83–84.
44 “Sometimes the lines of the song were intended for someone other than the laborer
himself… He knew from experience that he could sing at the boss things which he could
not say to him safely.” John Work, American Negro Songs(New York: Howell, Soskin & Co.,
1940), 40.
45 Edwin Aponte’s ethnographic work on North American Latino Protestants and their use
of coritos, short praise choruses that represent popular grassroots theology, is a helpful
parallel for interpreting the activity of the oppressed prisoners: “the majority of this
population [in] the situation is one of powerlessness, oppression, and hopelessness.
However, the perception, and indeed the actuality of life-situations are changed when
these symbols (coritos) are appropriated and used to make sense of one’s situation. God
takes the side of the powerless, affirms both God’s continuing concern and involvement,
and affirms the integrity of the culture, for these words of good news come through
musical vehicles that are part of the believer’s own culture and everyday experience.”
Edwin D. Aponte, “Coritosas Active Symbol in Latino Protestant Popular Religion,”Journal
of Hispanic/Latino Theology2, no. 3 (1995): 65.
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Generally, the adjective aural describes affective information that is felt through the sense of hearing. Specifically, I am employing aural history as a complementary oral history to exploit the sonic content of the prisoners’ songs that expresses felt belief. In reconstructing the histories of marginalized peo- ples, researching verbal oral history is not enough to recover their stories.46 In this history the recovery of the voices of African American prisoners working on the same construction site as R.G. Spurling in Southern Appalachia requires an imagination in which the aural dimension matters.47 Although it is extremely idealistic to imagine Spurling pursuing and being allowed verbal conversations with these prisoners, it is plausible to imagine him as receptive to their sung music. In understanding the reality of as many as 180 working and singing African Americans, this music becomes more than just background noise and should be recognized as a principal feature of the historic environment.
In view of Spurling’s penchant for expressing himself in music48 and the fact that much of his early work was written in reaction to the persecution experienced by the Holiness revivals,49 the historian is compelled to reinves- tigate Spurling’s writings in the context of the music of these African American prisoners. His theologizing in the face of religious oppression mirrors the reli- gious expression of the prisoners that Spurling would have encountered on the
46 Bruce Jackson relays this clearly in his reflections on recording prison worksongs: “When
we—outsiders all—look at printed versions of songs that have both physical and psy-
chological functions, we have to know something about those specifics, otherwise we are
looking at words and staves, nothing more.”Wake Up Dead Man(Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1972), xvii.
47 This is an attempt to recover what J. Kameron Carter has labeled “counterhistory”: “Coun-
terhistory, therefore, is an act of memory—to speak theologically, of anamnesis—of
remembering in a certain way: counterhistory remembers how the unifying light of the
presentorderofthingspresupposesandissustainedbygroupopposition.”Race(NewYork:
Oxford University Press, 2008), 65–66.
48 R.G. Spurling’s use of songs and poems is prolific and is confirmed as a primary method
of self-expression in the first page of the book he began writing in the late 1890s: “I have
prayed, studied and preached on the doctrines which I do here set forth in the following
pages by songs and short lectures…” Throughout the fifty-one-page book Spurling sup-
plies fourteen songs and poems. Richard G. Spurling,The Lost Link(Turtletown, TN: 1920),
1. As an interesting corollary Klotter expounds upon the overlap between the folk tra-
ditions, including religious song and poetry, of white Appalachians and lowland-South
African Americans. James C. Klotter, “The Black South and White Appalachia,” in Blacks
in Appalachia, ed. William H. Turner and Edward J. Cabbell (Lexington, KY: University of
Kentucky Press, 1985), 51–52.
49 Coulter, “The Development of Ecclesiology in the Church of God,” 64.
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Hiwassee Loop project. Between the church burning and the continual harass- ment by and expulsion from local congregations, Spurling finds and refines language for his theology of the church in the lived motif of persecution.
Through blood and through strife They hazarded their life, They were hunted and killed Over mountain and hill.50
Spurling wrote that to be the church in the face of these trials was to uphold the “law of love,” the lost link of God’s government. Yet this law was intricately connected to “persecution” and “blood-stained garments.”51 In Spurling’s expe- rience, the snare of creedal adherence and church division through denomina- tional exclusivism was not an intellectual proposition but a lived reality that had led “christians [sic] to persecute each other.”52 He saw the suffering of the crucifixion as a removal of “malice, envy, strife, [and] hatred.” The cross forged in suffering was more than “the huge beam of timber … on which … [Christ] spilt His most precious blood.” The cross was the “cancel[ing] stamp of God’s grace,” forged in persecution and to be taken up by believers as they actualize God’s law of love in the world.53
Yet, for Spurling this law of love was also intimately connected to labor. For Spurling the labor of this cross was not for payment but out of commitment to the felt love of God:
Go work in my vineyard today, The Master is calling for you; Why ask your poor brethren for pay? The Master will give you your due.54
Listening between the lines of Spurling’s poems and songs, the religious call to labor in God’s church reveals a parallel to the labor music of the African American worksong tradition. In Spurling’s verses the reader is thrust into the crescendos of God’s love in the moment of persecution. God’s love is felt in
50 Spurling, Lost Link, 17.
51 Ibid.
52 Eld. R.G. Spurling, “Dangers and Hindrances to the Cause of Christ,”The Way1, no. 6 (June
1904): 1.
53 R.G.S., “The Glory of the Cross,”The Way2, no. 9 (September 1905): 4.
54 Spurling, Lost Link, 37.
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the divine power of the Holy Spirit, and God’s call to love is emotively more palpable than doctrinal creeds and denominational positions:
A chain of doctrine now appears, That’s cursed the sects for many years; Be truth or false just which it May, It drives God’s Spirit power away.
When their churches first begun, By the Holy Spirit they were run; But when their creeds each church had took, The Holy Spirit them forsook.55
It is this felt divine power that had healed Spurling from the “doom of death” as an sickly infant and would lead him to found the Church of God.56
In addition to music, Spurling’s use of technical railroad imagery in a 1913 sermon and his 1897 and 1920 writings provides more weight to the plausibility of the prisoners’ influence on him and the Church of God.57 Spurling’s sub- sequent use of the railroad imagery of narrow and broad gauge rails reflects the progression of the Hiwassee Loop construction58 and especially demon- strates these influences: “Having felt it my duty to read my Bible in search of the truth, I soon found myself, so to speak, trying to run a broad gauge engine on a narrow gauge railway.”59 Spurling preached that the “great engine of the Church of God can not travel these side tracks [of denominationalism and creeds] because they are narrow gauge.”60 This evolution of narrow gauge to broad gauge railroad tracks in the railroad construction figured prominently in
55 Ibid., 43–44.
56 Ibid., 47.
57 A transcript of the sermon is found in the printed minutes of the Church of God Gen-
eral Assembly: Echoes from the Eighth General Assembly of the Churches of God held in
Cleveland, TN January 7–12 1913(Cleveland TN: Church of God Printing House, 1913), 38–41,
accessed and used by permission of Dixon Pentecostal Research Center Archives: Cleve-
land, TN. Spurling, The Lost Link, and “An Appeal,” manuscript dated May 4, 1897, Wade
Phillips private collection. Much of what is in the manuscript was reproduced in the 1920
publication ofThe Lost Link.
58 As the construction progressed, so also did rail standards, and before the section was
finished the original narrow gauge tracks of the Hiwassee Loop had to be changed to the
standard or broad gauge. Klein, History of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, 308–309. 59 Spurling,The Lost Link, 47.
60 Eighth General Assembly Minutes, 39.
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figure 1
Spurling Train Chart
Spurling’s memory and provided a graphic expression of his understanding of spiritual reformation. Spurling illustrated his sermon at the 1913 Church of God General Assembly using a hand-drawn chart.61 Still extant, the chart contains an image of atrainon a wide track(standardgauge)that splits in twodirections. The upward split is labeled “Arian” and the downward “Roman.” Another split off the “Roman” track is unlabeled but is indicated to be the sixteenth-century Reformation. In front of these split tracks are numerous smaller (narrow gauge) tracks and on the right side of the chart is another wide (standard gauge) track to which the (Gospel Train) engine must return.
Though seemingly peripheral to the traditional written histories, Spurling’s involvement in railroad construction and his prolific use of song and verse become extremely significant for the historian who is investigating African American influences on the early history of the Church of God. The music of these African Americans during the logging and lumber work of Spurling causes us to reassess how we describe the beginnings of this Appalachian pentecostal church. Written history records an isolated white Pentecostalism,
61 See “Spurling Railroad Chart.”
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while aural historical elements raise questions of sacred conversation and symbiotic reception in the sidelines of worksongs and forgotten prisoners.
Taken further, the African American prisoners that worked alongside Spurl- ing become extremely significant if their songs are reconceptualized. These prisoners, re-envisaged with a dignifying imagination that makes room for lis- tening between the lines of traditional history, become religious informants that would have helped forge Spurling’s ecclesiology and founding leader- ship.62 The presence of these African American prisoners becomes vitally im- portant in order to understand the historical setting of the Church of God’s formation, especially in the context of Spurling’s influence on the Church of God as its founding pastor and as mentor to first general overseer Ambrose J. Tomlinson,63 and the impact upon the denomination of the three event- phases contemporaneous to Spurling’s work on the railroad. When a pastor has founded a new church and, subsequently, a pentecostal denomination in which such poignant music of persecution and love has played such a vital role, it would be negligent to ignore the songs and sacred sung expressions of the African American prisoners that Spurling encountered while working on the Hiwassee Loop.
Yet, this historical revision cannot be achieved at the cost of inadvertently creating other historical vacuums. Spurling and the Holiness adherents that would become the Church of God were immersed in a crucible of ecclesial innovation.Spurling’sgroupwasincontactwithotheremergingbodies,suchas F.W. Henck’s East Tennessee Holiness Association, whose evangelists preached at the 1896 Shearer Schoolhouse Revival services and would later propagate B.H. Irwin’s multiple baptisms of fire.64 Even Spurling’s original discomfort and his search for renewal arose from the fiery disagreements about the Landmark- ism teachings of James Pendelton and James Graves.65 While listening between
62 Aponte’s ethnomusicology of Latino coritos depicts music as “a congregational way of
doing and teaching theology,” and I believe that this concept could also be applied to
the influences of the African American prisoners’ worksongs. Aponte, “Coritos as Active
Symbol in Latino Protestant Popular Religion,” 63.
63 Tomlinson introduced Spurling on the occasion of Spurling’s 1913 sermon by saying, “In
one sense I look upon him as my father.”Eighth General Assembly Minutes, 8. 64 Woods, “Daniel Awrey, the Fire-Baptized Movement, and the Origins of the Church of
God.”
65 David G. Roebuck, “Restorationism and a Vision for World Harvest,” Cyberjournal for
Pentecostal-Charismatic Research 5 (February 1999), http://pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj5/
roebuck1.html, accessed June 4, 2013. Coulter, “The Development of Ecclesiology in the
Church of God,” 62.
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the lines, the historian cannot neglect the lines of established history. It has not been myintentionheremerely toestablish historicalethnic diversityat the cost of neglecting the ecclesial diversity.
I am, rather, arguing for a re-evaluation of historiography. As historians of Pentecostalism, our project, in its many contexts such as the early Church of God, requires a broadening of the historical material because pentecostal his- tories were constituted through a broadening of potential protagonists. Aural testimonies, heard between the lines of African American worksongs along- side the songs of an itinerant white Baptist preacher, not only diversify the ethnographic setting of the early Church of God, but also facilitate the histori- cal remembering of forgotten and marginalized religious protagonists.
The presence of these African American prisoners challenges the notion of isolated whites, revealing new protagonists and, thereby, plausible religious pedagogies. African American prisoners singing while building the Hiwassee Loop railroad reveal initial religious influences in Spurling’s person that may have opened him to a more deeply felt Christianity. This Christianity, man- ifested and practiced in the Holiness worship of the Shearer School House Revival and the 1907 Church of God acceptance of the Azusa Street pentecostal doctrines, would have echoed Spurling’s encounter with the African American prisoners.66 Spurling worked on an immense project that had a lasting impact on his religious identity, and he was confronted with these worksongs for hours at a time. These singing African Americans who have been left out the written histories may well have helped transform Spurling’s mundane labor of logging and railroad construction into a sacred symbol in which the “ineffable [was] breaking into the sphere of the mundane.”67
Listening to the sung call and response choruses of these African American prisoners underscores the importance of an imaginative historiography that acknowledges their presence and possible influence on others like R.G. Spurl- ing and the Church of God. It is highly unlikely that Spurling spoke or wrote the- ology with the African Americans prisoners, but if one understands sung music as a congregational way of doing theology,68 one could ask whether Spurling’s experience of their worksongs in any way shaped his religious beliefs. The pres- ence of these African Americans prisoners is very important during this crucial
66 Tomlinson later appropriated the doctrinal teachings of the 1906 Azusa Street Mission to
the charismatic experiences of the Church of God after his 1908 experience of glossolalia
as the initial sign of Spirit Baptism. Roger G. Robins, A.J. Tomlinson: Plainfolk Modernist
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 184–188.
67 Aponte, “Coritos as Active Symbol in Latino Protestant Popular Religion,” 61–62. 68 Ibid., 63.
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period in which Spurling founded churches and then experienced exuberant Holinessworshipatthe1896ShearerSchoolhouseRevival.TheseAfricanAmer- ican voices in Appalachian pentecostal history deserves to be heard.
Conclusion: Why Listen?
This work has not yielded empirical verifications but rather imaginative recon- siderations. I have sought to raise the question of African American influence on the Church of God specifically and the incorporation of aural historiography generally. Yet, a serious question about Pentecostal Theology remains: If Pente- costalism was sung, preached, and established by untraditional protagonists, how can we write that history using traditional historiographical methods?
Pentecostalism’s history and historiography must open a place for aural as well as written history. The creative stretching of historiography that incorpo- rates less traditional methods is more than interdisciplinary expirmentation; it is an intentional effort to record all the actors in the drama of Pentecostalism’s history. Hearing these forgotten African American prisoners between the lines of the Church of God’s early history inspires a serious question: Will pentecostal historiography listen between the lines of the history to recover all Pentecostal- ism’s unheard protagonists?
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